


How to Become a Wizard

by Chokopoppo



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 12:42:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3209624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chokopoppo/pseuds/Chokopoppo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third was an awesome swordfighter, a dragon-whisperer, and the greatest Wizarding Hero who ever lived. But Hiccup's memoirs look back to when he was a very ordinary boy, and finding it hard to be a Hero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Train Ride

**Author's Note:**

> Who doesn't want to cast their favorite characters into Hogwarts houses? Nobody, that's who.
> 
> Anyway, here's a series of short drabbles about the HTTYD crew at Hogwarts, because who doesn't love that? See the answer above.

So it sounded kind of mean in the specific words he thought it, but Hiccup was genuinely happy to get away from home. As the summer before his first year of secondary school began, his father had gotten more and more anxious - no, not anxious. Anxious wasn’t really a word that existed in his father’s vocabulary of existence. It was more like…edgy. Aggressive. Cagey. There’d been fights every other day, when his father wasn’t busy in his study or at work, making the household a split dichotomy between hostile and empty. The owl had fixed that. The owl had fixed everything.

His father struggled with explaining things, that was the trouble. Stoick tended to pace in the living room or the study and mutter to himself under the cover of his beard when he thought no one was listening, rather than actually, uh, talk to anyone. About anything. So it took a while (read: several days) to actually get an explanation out of him. And when the explanation was out, it took another few days for Hiccup to believe him.

But here he was, sitting on the red leather seat of a magic train at a station that didn’t, technically, exist. If he looked out the window and sorted through the crowd, he could find the reddened, pleased faces of his father and his uncle, trying to look noble and composed and failing hideously. It was kind of…stressful. Really stressful. His dad had never really supported him before, and the family backup was sort of, uh, freaking him out. He stared at the table in front of him instead.

The cabin door slammed open. Hiccup jumped. He did _not_ shriek. That _didn’t happen_.

The girl at the door stared hard. Hiccup hadn’t realized until now just how hard a person could stare. Or that a stare COULD be hard. Something new every day. “Did you just scream?” 

“No, nope, I definitely didn’t,” he managed, and tried to make himself look even smaller than he already was.

“Sounded like a scream to me.”

“I, uh, I think I would remember doing something like that,” he tried again, “do you, uh, do you need something?”

She scowled for a second, which made all of Hiccup’s organs want to turn into water and drain out of his body in pure terror, then shifted her gaze to the empty seat across from him. “Can I sit in here?” She pointed at the seat, as though there were anywhere else she could be referring to. “All the other cabins are full of upperclassmen.”

Hiccup blinked twice. Apparently, the pause was too long, because she turned to scowl at him again. “Yeah, sure, of course,” his mouth managed, heart thrumming. She looked away again, and Hiccup barely stifled an audible sigh of relief, choosing instead to stare intently out the window. Across the table from him, the sound of the girl slumping heavily into her seat went almost unnoticed.

At first, the silence was kind of nice. Not saying anything meant not saying something stupid, which was inevitably the first thing out of Hiccup’s mouth at all times, but probably especially now. He’d thrown a couple glances at the girl across from him - when she wasn’t scowling, she was stomach-churningly pretty. Hiccup didn’t hang out with pretty people. In fact, back home, Hiccup didn’t hang out with people, period. So maybe just being quiet was how people did it. But the silence began to grow…unpleasant. Like the feeling of wearing a sweatshirt outside on a day slightly too hot for it, but not hot enough to justify taking it off. He pressed his forehead against the glass, stared out at the throng. He couldn’t find his father in it anymore.

“You have family out there?”

Hiccup glanced up at the girl again, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was staring out the window too, gnawing on her lip like a nervous habit. “Oh, yeah, my dad,” he said. “What about you?”

She shook her head. “Just my uncle,” she replied, eyes fixed on the crowd, “my parents couldn’t make it. They’re busy people.”

Something wanted to come out of Hiccup’s mouth - maybe an indignant cry, or a seriously confused reality check, or _something_ \- but he glanced at the girl, fingers clenched tightly on her lap, lips set and eyebrows furrowed, and something clicked. _She’s exactly as mad as I am._ And…from the rise and fall of her shoulders, _scared_. “Are you, uh.” She didn’t turn to look at him. Hiccup swallowed, tried again. “I mean, it’s none of my business, but are, uh, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she snapped, then breathed in hard. Hiccup recognized the sniffle-gasp. His dad did it all the time. No fear. Not on the outside.

He bit his lip. No need to pry. “Sorry,” he said, because it seemed like the right thing to do, picking at the denim of his jeans. The train’s whistle blew above them. He didn’t watch the girl gasp, press both her palms against the window, and wave at the crowd vaguely. He didn’t look at her for a long time.

In fact, maybe an hour had passed before either of them spoke again. “Um, hey,” she started, definitely less confident than she’d been before, “I’m…Astrid.”

Hiccup blinked, looked up from the book he’d been scanning, and smiled. “Hey, Astrid,” he replied, because it seemed like the right thing to say, “I’m Hiccup.”

“Your name’s Hiccup?”

“Yyyyep.” He rolled his eyes, hard. “Awesome name, I know.”

“It kind of is, actually,” Astrid said, but there was a palm over her mouth, and she was grinning. “You’ll be one of a kind. Won’t be any other Hiccups at Hogwarts.”

“There probably won’t be any other Astrids, either,” he said. Her smile was kind of infectious. “But at least Astrid sounds like a name.”

“I could argue that point,” she said, grinning, “but you _did_ certainly put that in perspective for me.”

“I do my best.”

Astrid snickered, then tucked a hair behind her ear. “Hey, um, thanks,” she said suddenly, “for…letting me sit with you and stuff. It was cool of you.”

“What? Nah. I mean, who wouldn’t?” He waved a hand vaguely in front of his face.

“Actually, most of the train, it turns out,” she said, scowling at the door. “I got shot down so many times, I figured, you know, maybe if I was a little meaner, someone would let me in. And you did. So, uh, thanks. And sorry. For scaring you.”

This time, it was Hiccup’s turn to snort into his palm. Astrid turned her scowl on him. “Sorry!” He managed. “Sorry, I’m not laughing at you, I’m just…you can be seriously scary when you want to, you know that? Scared the heck out of me.”

“I take pride in my fear mongering,” she said, huffily, then added, “so what are you reading, anyway?"

Whatever they talked about, it lasted them the entire ride.


	2. Sorting Hats: Rude at the Best of Times

The twins weren’t exactly famous for their ability to get along. In fact, the twins were mostly famous for their ability to do pretty much anything else. Sometimes, Tuffnut wished he and his sister were like the twins in the books their mom made them read, the ones who were always in sync or had psychic mind reading powers or pretended to be each other or something. Instead, they had to share everything, and were no better for it - same clothes, same room, same plates, same _everything_. When they were little, they even had to share the same bed and bathtub. They even had to share the owl and the letter it brought. Telling their parents that Ruffnut was a girl, and that being in the same room as her all the time was _gross_ didn’t seem to make any difference. Not that their parents ever listened to them anyway. About anything.

Over the summer, though, Ruff and Tuff had done the most getting-along they’d ever done, despite how hard they clenched their fists and teeth about it. The idea of going to Hogwarts in her brother’s clothes and the boy’s uniform had sent Ruffnut into a distress-spiral, and, because she was no fun when she was moping, Tuffnut had sighed and rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders, and taken her out to one of the Red Cross shops downtown so they could get stuff for cheap with their pocket money. It had been a lot of sighing and slumping against walls while his dumb idiot sister tried on every tee shirt and skirt and pair of leggings the store had, and it had been pretty hard to sneak it into the house without their parents seeing it (and pack it into Ruffnut’s bag, also without their parents seeing it), but as long as they got to slam their heads into each other once it was done, it wasn’t a waste of the summer. They grew their hair out, too - Ruff because she wanted long hair, Tuff because he wanted to have longer hair than his sister.

Now, standing in the great hall in a bustle of students, Tuffnut wouldn’t admit it, but he was happy to have his sister there. They were pretty much guaranteed to be in the same house, because, duh, _twins_ , but the sheer pressing number of people around them was isolating as heck. His sister was picking nervously at the skirt of her uniform, shoulders hunched, eyes darting back and forth like a hunted animal, waiting for someone to push her or say something nasty, like at home. At home, though, Ruffnut could punch whoever called her a name right in the nose (and would). Here, they were basically defenseless. Thank Odin that everyone around them seemed too scared of the sorting to say anything, anyway.

He could feel something in his hand. Definitely not his sister’s hand, he was pretty sure. She would, uh. She would warn him, if she was gonna do that.

At least the professor or whoever calling the names had the decency to go in alphabetical order. “Thorston” started with a T, and Tuffnut was pretty sure T happened really late in the alphabet. That was probably why he and Ruff always sat at the back of the classroom in primary school. The way their names delayed them on the list, though, was starting to build up, uh…what was that feeling called? Like, that sick, queasy, tense, nervy-feeling. Whatever. The feeling he got whenever his mom found something he and his sister had done, and she wasn’t saying anything about it, but they both knew sometime that night she would but it _hadn’t happened yet_ but it was _totally going to_ and -

“Thorston, Ruffnut,” the professor at the front called, and the thing that was not his sister’s hand slipped away from Tuffnut’s clenching fist. Slipped. There was a little prying, so maybe it didn’t count as slipping? Whatever. Tuff decided to be privately offended by the fact that Ruff got called up before him, but whatever. His fists clenched at his sides as he watched the enormous hat engulf his sister’s tiny head. Whatever it said, that was where he was going, too.

It took _forever_ to decide, too, which was doubly aggravating. The hat frowned, and wiggled, and moved its mouth like it was talking, all while Ruffnut, from the shoulders down, tensed and fiddled with her hands, feet tapping compulsively. But eventually, it flipped backwards, spread its gaping maw, and bellowed, “SLYTHERIN!”

The furthest table, the, uh, green one, exploded into loud applause. Ruffnut tugged the hat off her head like it was red-hot, jumped to her feet, and bolted for the table. She might have been blushing, but like, whatever, not like Tuffnut cared. He only barely waited for his name to be called before swaggering forward to set the hat on his head. Slytherin, huh? That had a cool ring to it. The Slytherin Thorston twins. He could see it.

_I wouldn’t be too sure about that._

“Woah, what?” Oh, right. The hat was supposed to talk to you or something. It was huge. And totally dark. Apparently, it going all the way over your head was part of the experience. “Look, your job should be totally easy,” he thought hard at it, “my sister was just up here. We’re twins. So if she’s a Slytherin, that makes me a Slytherin, too. That’s how it works.”

 _I think I would know how it works,_ the hat admonished coolly, _students are judged on their own personal values and worth, not those of the family._

“Oh. Uh. Good. My sister’s values suck,” he thought back, “but, I mean, we’re still twins. We’re, like, basically the same person, except that I’m a better version of her.”

_I’ve seen your sister’s mind inside and out, and-_

“Ew.”

_AND, I’ve determined that the two of you, when it comes to values and goals, are nothing alike. You would make a terrible Slytherin._

“What?” He wasn’t sure if he’d thought that or said it out loud. “But we’re _twins_ ,” he thought back, quietly. "Besides which, she needs me this year. I’m her brother. I’m supposed to, like, protect her, or something. Plus, I would make an _awesome_ Slytherin. I would make an awesome anything! Because I’m awesome. And I totally dig the way I look in green.”

 _See, that kind of thought is exactly why you are not a Slytherin,_ the hat said calmly. The hat’s ‘calm voice’ was really starting to peeve Tuffnut off. _When your sister was with me, she told me about what she wanted for herself. You? You want to be in Slytherin for your sister’s sake, not your own._

“Also my own sake! Slytherin is a totally cool word,” he thought back desperately, but he could hear the blood pounding in his ears. He wasn’t going to be sorted into Slytherin, he realized. His sister was going to be alone.

 _She won’t be alone. Neither will you._ And then, as though with an entirely different pair of ears, Tuffnut heard the hat yell, “HUFFLEPUFF!”

He wanted to argue, like he always did, to tell the hat that it was wrong and also that was the _lamest name for a house ever_ , but for once in his life, the words stuck in his throat. He pulled the hat off, walked slowly towards the most excited table, and looked out towards the Slytherins to see if he could find his sister in the crowd. He couldn’t.


End file.
